Name: Koond the Table
Ingredients: two lemons; pepper; salt; nutmeg

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Koond the Table

Ingredients

two lemons
pepper
salt
nutmeg

Directions

Cut some truffles and mushrooms in moderately small slices ; put them in a saucepan with a goodly piece of butter, and a little garlic finely minced ; or, better still, rub the saucepan freely with garlic. When the butter is melted squeeze in the juice of one or two lemons. Leave your mushrooms and truffles for a little while in this ; add pepper and salt in due proportion, and a little grated nutmeg ; then put in a sufficient quantity of good Spanish sauce to make a nice ragout, which must simmer for about half an hour. Five minutes before serving add a glass or two of sherry, and you will have produced a noble dish.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

30Calories

1 gProtein

1 gFat

6 gCarbs

What these numbers assume: 4 portions

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Lemon	juice of 1 lemon (48ml)	12
Nutmeg	1 tsp ground (2.2g)	12
Black Pepper	1 tsp ground (2.3g)	6
Salt	1 tsp (6g)	0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Chevalley de Rivaz, Victor. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).